ATLHawksfan21 wrote:Paul made 17.8 this year and Dwight made 19.5. I don't see why it would kill them to take this amount and that isn't 6 million short of their max is it? Correct me if I am wrong because I am not an expert on max contracts. With these prices we would have Paul/Horford/Dwight/Lou/Jenkins all signed and be around 56 million. Let's assume there is a $60 million cap next year. That leaves us $4 million before hitting the luxury tax and that's not including the different exceptions that we have at our exposal. I don't see why the front office wouldn't be willing to pay some luxury tax to have a top 3 team in the league either. This can be done.
Let me be honest here: 10 years ago, I would have had the numbers down to the decimal, but today, I'm more lazy. There are others around here are very capable of putting together the numbers with accuracy so I leave it to them for actually showing the work. For this case though, I remember reading an article (I think about Paul's FA options) which said that we'll have $34M in pure cap space if we renounce all our FAs including Teague and Ivan and use our draft picks. The idea was that we could split the money in 1/2 and pay $17M to each which would be about $1.667M less than the max for Paul and $3.5M for Howard. The ? is whether they would accept. All things considered (missing salary and raises over 3 years to get Bird Rights) Paul would lose about $5.25M by taking the $1.667M up-front hit while Howard's number would come in around $11M over the same 3 years. Meanwhile, the players would still have to risk that in 3 years, the ASG would be willing to shell out over 70% of the cap to a 30 yo C and a 31 yo PG whose game is based on athletic ability. They could take a PO for the 4th year I guess, but they'd be losing even more $$ if they didn't opt out. It would definitely make it more attractive if we could simply offer the max to both of them. It wouldn't match what their respective LA team could offer, but it'd match whatever else was on the market.
OTOH, I do think that the chances of either of them winning a championship would be greater here than their current situations. With Paul, I agree with the naysayers on LAC. LAC's ownership has proven they won't pay the LT and they'll have $45-50M committed to 3 players for the next 3 seasons. Although I think there's still some potential in Griffin's game that can be achieved, I think the rest of the team won't be getting any better - including Jordan. Basically, they're like we were last year - topped out as a 4 seed, doesn't have the ownership that'll simply pay for a championship and I doubt that their GM (someone who has been in the LAC organization for something like 20 years) can do it with the salaries committed and probable assets they'll have. They'll be hoping for a 5/6 seed in a few short years.
As far as LAL, I can't see them being any better next year and they'll be completely hamstrung by the new CBA for as long as Kobe is playing going forward. I don't believe that Kobe would retire at the end of next season and allow his going out party to be him still getting back to a 100% from his Achilles injury. When Kobe went down against GSW, so did their "LeBron run" even if they don't know it yet. Kobe is already commanding 60% of LAL's cap and I don't think LAL's management is willing to cut him or his salary. That $200 gazillion TV contract can't do much to acquire talent when the rules are specifically set against just paying for championships. I don't think Kupchak is a bad GM and their ownership is definitely willing, but there's just no way to climb to elite status with today's CBA when two players take up the entire cap and you don't have the draft picks to supplement the talent.
